Let’s say you’ve taken your four-year-old son or daughter to the local park. There’s only little kids and their parents/nannies/babysitters around, and no one looks dangerous, so you let your kid go play with his or her peers while you sit o a bench chatting with another adult. Suddenly you hear the sound of a slap and a child crying. Turning to your kid, you see that she or he is the child crying. An adult you do not know just slapped your kid, and his now angrily and loudly berating her or him.
On the list of things that cross your mind to do now, how high is physically assaulting the person who slapped your kid? Please note that teh question is not what you should do, or even what you’d choose to do; it is what you would want to do.
You touch my child and you will be dealing with a very angry Mama Tiger, who is all fangs and claws. I’d start by shouting at you to get away from my child while I was still across the playground, coming on as fast as I could. Unless you step away immediately, you *will be *physically assaulted, at the very least shoved away, very possibly to the ground. You DO NOT mess with my child.
:: deep breath, deep breath ::
Okay, calmer now. Is this the correct reaction? Maybe not but it’s the one you’re gonna get.
BTW, I don’t mean you, Skald, when I say “you.” I mean the idiot sumbitch who would be stupid enough to rouse my ire in that way.
If an adult male slapped my 4 year old child, my first thought is absolutely to beat the everloving shit out of him and I think I would probably act on it. If it was an adult woman, I probably think it but don’t act on it. But it really depends on several factors.
I don’t have a child, but I’m afraid that my first instinct would be to comfort my child and make sure they’re okay along with asking “THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?!” of the assailant.
I like to think that I would then beat the everloving shit out of the person, male or female, then call 911 but in reality I’d likely be in too much shock to react with that kind of presence of mind.
If violence will prevent further harm, then it’s on the table. If my kid has run away and is no longer in immediate danger, than I have a 0% desire to be violent.
Seriously people, that’s how people die. Some fuckstick thinks it’s OK to smack a young child and you think that’s a good person to further provoke? Are you not from America or do you just think that he’s probably not going to snap and shoot you once you come at him? Nope nope nope, not even on the table for me.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but it wold not occur to me to act violently to the asshole. I’d be plenty angry, but I unless I had to psychically intervene to stop the assault, I wouldn’t touch the S.O.B.
Please remember that the thread question is about your impulse, not what you actually choose to do. Though I suspect that for a lot of us, there’s little choice involved, because there’s little thought involved.
Violence would definitely be high on the priority list… however, it appears in this situation that the physical attack against my child is done with.
Since there is not an immediate physical danger, I’d restrain my violent impulses until I can figure out what’s going on. I mean, if my 4yo kid just ran up and intentionally kicked the guy’s 2yo, then the little brat deserved the slap, right? (Not that a stranger should be delivering it, but he’s reacting on the same impulse to violence that’s prompting me.)
On the other hand, if it looked like my kid was going to get hit a second time, I wouldn’t wait to ask questions. Self-defense comes first.
On edit: just adding that this would be what I’d actually do, not just what I should do. Physical violence is not my first response to anything, though I’m not opposed to it in the right situation.
I would walk over, asking that adult what just happened, since I didn’t see it.
If they confirm that they slapped my child, then I will ask ‘why?’
If the answer to that is for anything short of my child punching this person’s scrotum or actively killing another child, then we’re walking into ‘someone gets it’ territory.
Because you know, if your kid walks up to me and punches me in the balls, your kid is getting smacked hard. Then you are. That and killing another kid, or possibly being wildly out of control doing felony level property damage are the only reasons I could see striking a child.
You’re asking for first instinct. If someone attacks either of my children, whatever their reason, my first instinct will be to hit them until they stop moving.
I am, of course, more than my base instincts, so that’s definitely not what I would do. What I would actually do is get my child the fuck away, immediately, from the person who thinks it would be a good idea to strike a 4-year old. I would use violence only insofar as it was needed to accomplish that goal. Then I’d consider calling the police, depending on the details of the situation.
ETA: I included the non-parent options in the poll mostly because I knew the childless would complain otherwise, just as someone will complain that I didn’t write “childfree” in the previous claus of this sentence. But I think actual parents’ will have more insightful options in this matter, because they won’t be approaching the situation completely hypothtetically; they’ll be imagining their own children.
When my boys were little, I always took our dogs with us when we went to the park or playground. Setters aren’t known for aggressive behavior, but if someone had threatened those kids, I’d simply have had to lose my hold on their leashes and they would have taken care of the problem immediately. I only had that happen once when another parent pulled my son off a slide because he felt it was his child’s turn to use it. Vanessa (our Irish Setter), ran right over to the man and simply inserted herself between he and my son. Every time he’d try to get around her, she bared her teeth and growled, she never took her eyes off him or lost contact with my boy. As soon as he backed away and left with his child, she came back to my side.
We never trained her to do that. She was just naturally protective. My boys were her pups.
No, I am one of those human beings who make typos. From the structure of English, the “his” you highlighted was clearly meant to be an “is”, and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
I’m not a parent, but if some other adult assaulted my hypothetical four-year-old, yeah, violence would be on my mind.
I doubt I’d act on it (unless the adult was actively assaulting the kid), but it would be on my mind. I don’t think there’s much that a four-year-old could do that would justify a slap from a stranger.